The family of Jacintha Saldanha has gathered to grieve at the home of the nurse's mother-in-law in southern India. Relatives poured in over the weekend to the smart single-storey home in Sorkala, near the town of Shirva in the south-west state of Karnataka.

Carmine Barboza, 69, has been talking regularly on the phone to her son, Saldanha's husband, Benedict Barboza. He remains in the UK looking after the couple's children as he waits to hear when his wife's body can be taken back to India.

Mrs Barboza said: "Jacintha was a very caring woman. She used to call us every Sunday without fail. We just cannot believe what has happened." Her Indian relatives added that she was "beautiful" and "good-natured". Saldanha's family belong to the Konkhani community, and are active members of a thriving expat community in Britain. Until her death last week at the age of 46, Saldanha spent the week living in a five-storey block of nurses' flats in central London, yards from where she worked at King Edward VII's Hospital.

At weekends she returned to her family home in the Westbury-on-Trym district of Bristol to be with Mr Barboza, 49, an accountant, their son Junal, 16, and daughter Lisha, 14. Lisha published a tribute to her mother on Facebook "I miss you, I loveeee you."

Ms Saldhana, a committed Christian, trained at a hospital in Mangalore, near where she was brought up.